johnnywilliamson
New member
Hello All from Austin, Texas -
A week after purchasing my new SE, I finally had some free time and ventured out into an approximately 105 degree heat index to detect an elementary school that was built in 1951. I had decided to follow the advice I had read here, and began my first hunt with the training wheels on (factory preset - turn on, noise cancel, and go!). Another post I read convinced me to use my 5-inch Excellerator coil instead of the 10-inch standard one to lessen the amount of signal input I would get per sweep of the coil. After approximately 3 hours of cruising around the school, I had found 12 pennies (no wheats), 3 clad quarters, 2 dimes (one clad, one 1951 silver), and a copper ring(?). Finding the silver dime was noteworthy, because it was found beneath a 3/8" X 6" threaded bolt. I honestly was not very optimistic when I first began hunting, due to a lot of the posts here where new SE users had difficulty during their early hunts, and had only found junk. I just decided to concentrate on listening for the high pitched tones, whether they occurred by themselves or embedded amongst other lower tones. Hopefully this post will serve to encourage those SE users to not give up too quickly on their machine, and spend as much time as you can playing around in the yard with samples of coins and junk to "tune" your ears to the desireable tones. I am definitely sold on my Minelab, and after my first day of hunting, have the following observations:
1) Two weeks ago, I made a make-shift test garden in my backyard, burying a clad nickel at 5 inches, a clad quarter at 8 inches, a penny at 4 inches, and a clad dime at 6 inches. My previous unit, a White's Spectrum, could only detect one of the coins (the penny) in factory pre-set. Also in pre-set, the SE gave at least a minor chirp on three of the four coins with a 5-inch coil, versus the 9.5-inch coil on the Spectrum!
2) After using the SE for a while, my attitude changed from "I am going to find mostly trash, but maybe I'll find a coin" to "I am going to find coins, with some periodic trash thrown in to keep me honest." I dug only one rusty nail, and the pulltabs I did dig were due to my making a decision to dig just to gain knowledge on my machine - I suspected trash before digging. If there are coins to be found, the SE will sniff 'em out.
3) Nearly all of my finds were made at the far perimeter of the school, under trees between the school entrance and a large slope down to a sidewalk/sidestreet. It appeared that no one had detected this area in quite some time, and the silver dime had been missed, because I know this school has been hit many times by others in the past. It is weird, but every time I hunt schools, there is always a "hot spot" that yields the large majority of finds, and the rest of the property has very little. And these hot spots are not consistent from school to school - sometimes the front, sometimes the sides, etc.
I appreciate Minelab's efforts to produce great detectors, and I am a very happy customer. Though I did not find anything noteworthy, I sure had fun, and that's the key. As my wife says about her triathlons, those who have the most fun WIN!
Many thanks also to everyone who posts here - your input has saved us SE newbies a lot of frustration through your guidance, experience, and recommendations. With continued reading of these posts and hunting time, I look forward to taking the training wheels off, and running wide open. Good luck to everyone in your future hunts. Johnny
A week after purchasing my new SE, I finally had some free time and ventured out into an approximately 105 degree heat index to detect an elementary school that was built in 1951. I had decided to follow the advice I had read here, and began my first hunt with the training wheels on (factory preset - turn on, noise cancel, and go!). Another post I read convinced me to use my 5-inch Excellerator coil instead of the 10-inch standard one to lessen the amount of signal input I would get per sweep of the coil. After approximately 3 hours of cruising around the school, I had found 12 pennies (no wheats), 3 clad quarters, 2 dimes (one clad, one 1951 silver), and a copper ring(?). Finding the silver dime was noteworthy, because it was found beneath a 3/8" X 6" threaded bolt. I honestly was not very optimistic when I first began hunting, due to a lot of the posts here where new SE users had difficulty during their early hunts, and had only found junk. I just decided to concentrate on listening for the high pitched tones, whether they occurred by themselves or embedded amongst other lower tones. Hopefully this post will serve to encourage those SE users to not give up too quickly on their machine, and spend as much time as you can playing around in the yard with samples of coins and junk to "tune" your ears to the desireable tones. I am definitely sold on my Minelab, and after my first day of hunting, have the following observations:
1) Two weeks ago, I made a make-shift test garden in my backyard, burying a clad nickel at 5 inches, a clad quarter at 8 inches, a penny at 4 inches, and a clad dime at 6 inches. My previous unit, a White's Spectrum, could only detect one of the coins (the penny) in factory pre-set. Also in pre-set, the SE gave at least a minor chirp on three of the four coins with a 5-inch coil, versus the 9.5-inch coil on the Spectrum!
2) After using the SE for a while, my attitude changed from "I am going to find mostly trash, but maybe I'll find a coin" to "I am going to find coins, with some periodic trash thrown in to keep me honest." I dug only one rusty nail, and the pulltabs I did dig were due to my making a decision to dig just to gain knowledge on my machine - I suspected trash before digging. If there are coins to be found, the SE will sniff 'em out.
3) Nearly all of my finds were made at the far perimeter of the school, under trees between the school entrance and a large slope down to a sidewalk/sidestreet. It appeared that no one had detected this area in quite some time, and the silver dime had been missed, because I know this school has been hit many times by others in the past. It is weird, but every time I hunt schools, there is always a "hot spot" that yields the large majority of finds, and the rest of the property has very little. And these hot spots are not consistent from school to school - sometimes the front, sometimes the sides, etc.
I appreciate Minelab's efforts to produce great detectors, and I am a very happy customer. Though I did not find anything noteworthy, I sure had fun, and that's the key. As my wife says about her triathlons, those who have the most fun WIN!
Many thanks also to everyone who posts here - your input has saved us SE newbies a lot of frustration through your guidance, experience, and recommendations. With continued reading of these posts and hunting time, I look forward to taking the training wheels off, and running wide open. Good luck to everyone in your future hunts. Johnny
